Isn't the Siku quanshu enough? Reflections on the impact of new digital tools for classical Chinese

At a recent workshop a Chinese cultural historian whom I hold in high esteem raised the following question: "Isn't the Siku quanshu enough?" The implication was that the search functionality of one of the largest digital corpora of classical Chinese texts has made a great contribution to Chinese cultural studies, that this is sufficient, and that no more precious research time should be spent on the creation, application, and revision of digital tools. The position is representative of a good proportion of humanities scholars. We have all become avid users of databases and search engines but we are concerned about the digitization of everything. Below I respond to the specific question regarding the Siku quanshu; the points I raise can also be read as a response to the more general question why humanities scholars should not rely on a limited set of large commercial text databases and why they should take an active interest in the question of which databases and which tools can best serve humanities research questions and methods in the future.

Digital Interpretations

This post is based on an apology for my ecclectic use of digital research methods in the final part of a forthcoming monograph (Hilde De Weerdt, Information, Territory, and Networks: The Crisis and Maintenance of Empire in Song China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center). I first review the historical roots of historians' fears about the digital and proceed with an explanation of some potential and real benefits of digital methods for philological and historical inquiry.